Loki's Reincarnation
General: Loki's reincarnation is a chaotic evil arcane trickster who has fully embraced his divine past life and is trying to reclaim that title. Appearance: Loki's reincarnation is a pale human with shrewd features and curly, fiery red hair. He is dressed in gaudy blue and red robes with a gold trim. He wears one of the seven silver keys, that of prophecy, tied around his neck. Personality: Loki's reincarnation shares his divine predecessor's love of mischief and deception.He is far more calculating than Vornir, the party's previous antagonist, and will not engage in direct battle unless he is sure he can win. At first, he thought he could destroy the party with the re-assembled Staff of Loki when they were weakened from fighting Vornir. However, upon even being injured by them, he fled with his staff wanting to fight them again only when he could assure victory. While he seemed pure evil, it was eventually revealed that he regretted having to constantly fight his former brothers the Asgardians. He had gone to extreme means to make himself powerful enough to face them so he wasn't destroyed again. But, ultimately, he wished that the events leading to Ragnarok never occurred. In Loki's mind, Chaos serves a purpose - it creates hard times which create strong men. He sees himself like a lightning bolt that strikes a forest, burns it, and leads to new growth emerging from the ash. He argued that all he had done led to the party's growth. Abilities: Loki's reincarnation was able to master the Staff of Loki and even fire magical blasts from both stones at once. He is able to create a powerful barrier of magical deflection around himself, but not one that is impossible for the party attacking him all out to break through. Against Vlaakith's soldiers he demonstrated use of silent and still spell to hide his spellcasting. Weaknesses: Loki's reincarnation is, ultimately, a bit of a coward. He does not want to die again and will resort to bargaining if he feels backed into a corner. In this case, it worked out for him though. Goals: Loki's reincarnation longs to grasp the power he once held as a deity. History: Manipulating the Manipulator: At some point after Loki's death and the start of The Thaw, a man named Lukan was born. He became an adventurer with an incredible knack for sorcery and trickery. During his many travels, he encountered Tamamo No Mae who sought to use him to achieve her plans. However, he decided to betray her when he learned that she had come into possession of a staff which had the power to grant wishes once a year and could be used to de-age himself. Loki stole the staff and fled from her. Finding the Key of Prophecy and discovering his true nature: ''' His thirst for power remained un-satiated. Somehow he instinctively felt that he was capable of even more. So he sought objects of even greater power. One of these items was one of the seven silver keys, which he could use to travel to one of the dream realms of the Astral Plane.Specifically, he found a key associated with prophetic dreams and from the dream lord of prophecy learned of his true identity as Loki. He also learned of a prophecy that Balder would one day return to confront him. Thus, he dedicated himself to locating the shards of his lost divinity. At the same time, he began to search for Balder's reincarnation. '''Conflict with Regin and losing the staff: However, his great power drew the attention of other mighty spellcasters. One day, Lord Regin, a dwarven sorcerer who had transformed himself into a Lich, stole his staff. He hoped it could be used to destroy his brother, Fafnir, who was cursed by Loki to become a red dragon that destroyed his kingdom and stole its treasures. Loki's reincarnation was furious and found and stole Regin's phylactery. He then used his dream key to travel to the Astral Plane and sell the Phylactery to the King of Nightmares who enslaved Regin. He asked that the Nightmare King give him his staff back, but the Nightmare King refused and decided to keep both for himself. He returned to the material plane, knowing that now he had a limited time to achieve his plans. He considered lichdom and vampirism but believed that this would alter the nature of his soul and prevent him from ever becoming the divine Loki again. Creating the disguise of Dughall: Deciding to keep a lower profile after his encounter with Regin, he disguised himself as the Leprechaun Dughall. Then, upon hearing of the Illuminator Guild, decided to join it while keeping his true nature and true power hidden. He became the curiosity shop keeper with the Illuminator Guild and sold many of the trinkets he had collected over the years while purchasing others from adventurers. Under the guise of a Leprechaun, a fey, few would question either his mischievous nature or his love of collecting powerful magic items. He offered people the chance to answer riddles to receive a discount and charged them more if they got the answer wrong. The riddles also served the purpose of potentially revealing to him the identity of those wise enough to oppose him or simple enough to manipulate. Dughall would often task adventurers with retrieving his stolen "shillelagh", with the promise of granting them a wish. He knew that anyone powerful enough to actually achieve this was likely to be a reincarnated deity themselves Manipulating Jack: As Dughall, he also matched wits with Jack the Giant Killer and tricked the folk hero into gambling away many of the treasures he had taken from the cloud giant's castle. These were added to his "curiosity shop." Bargain with Sharuk: Eventually, he learned that Tamamo No Mae had used a Githzerai master, Sharuk, to train Vornir the Prince of Jotun - then discarded him when he was of no further use. Loki's reincarnation gave Sharuk the tools he needed in exchange for knowledge of the Astral Plane and the Gith. Revealing himself to the party: Upon learning of the party finding the Tear of Amun Ra and Vornir wielding a stone of cold and trying to re-assemble the staff of Loki, he considered killing the party right then and there, taking their stone and then going to the north to kill Vornir and his father. However, he decided he wanted to minimize the number of foes that he had to contend with at once. Thus, he allowed the Illuminators and the forces of Vanargand to clash. "Dughall" had disappeared before the battle and left behind a mushroom for the party to find to travel to the astral plane and meet him there. He expected them to lose to Vornir and escape the battle by coming to him. There, he could safely kill them and take their stone. Instead, the party killed Vornir and completed the Staff of Loki themselves. Using telekinesis, he ripped the staff from their hands and revealed himself, telling them that the stones contained shards of divinity which could be used to restore his godly power. He admitted that he was impressed with Balder and the others and offered his former divine cousin the chance to join him. He said that he had only caused Ragnarok after he had been chained for centuries with a serpent drooling venom into his eyes for killing Balder. He said that he hadn't expected Hadnur to shoot him in the heart with the mistletoe arrow and kill him - just injure him and prove he wasn't invincible- and that it was all "a big misunderstanding." He offered to let things go back to the way they were. However, when asked by the party what he would do if he became Loki again, he replied "whatever I damn well please" as he would be the strongest being on the plane. The party decided at this time to battle him, not wanting to unleash such a reckless power upon the world, and attempt to take back the staff. Wielding both stones, Loki's reincarnation overpowered and defeated Adam. However, Vera and Ren were able to injure him enough to force him to retreat to the Astral Plane using the dream key. He said that he could see how Vornir was surprised by their power and said he would not risk being killed by them before achieving his full power again. Conquering the Githyanki: When he traveled to the Astral Plane, Loki allowed himself to be captured by Githyanki. He then discovered how Vlaakith had been devouring the souls of Githyanki who became strong enough to threaten her via a siphoning machine in a futile attempt to achieve divinity. He discovered and stole her phylactery and then destroyed Vlaakith's body with Loki's staff. He exposed Vlaakith's deception to the Githyanki - how she was not a goddess but just a lich devouring their greatest warriors and not transforming them into her immortal guardians like she claimed, just creating Shield Guardians to replace them. He explained how she had been holding them back, preventing them from achieving victory over the Githzerai, and promising to lead them into a new age of greatness. Loki then gave the Githyanki Vlaakith's phylactery and offered to return her to them if they wanted her back. He then laughed triumphantly as he watched them smash the phylactery to pieces and declare loyalty to him. Loki plans to use Vlaakith's soul siphoning machine as a "piece of the puzzle" to awaken the power of his past life. Manipulating Sharuk's Coup: Shortly after Loki overthrew the Githyanki Queen, Sharuk allowed Loki to remove his soul from his body. This way, he could hide his new evil nature from his former master. He said Loki could have it if he died, believing he would never be defeated. He was able to convince several fellow students to join him in plotting a coup to overthrow their master. Sharuk's students attempted to kill the party during their trials. But, when they returned with a ghostly Vornir and a captured Tamamo No Mae after the Trial of the Rabbit, Sharuk panicked when he overheard Vera try to warn Master Penumbra of a potential plot against him. Sharuk struck down his master and his students attacked the other students. However, rather than it being a total bloodbath as Loki intended, the party was able to goad Sharuk into allowing them a week to recover and train and then fight him and his top students in a series of one-on-one tournament matches. The party narrowly prevailed against Sharuk's students and then ganged up on him, killing him while minimizing the amount of Githzerai deaths. Loki had lost his pawn, Sharuk, who he had never intended to allow to rule the Astral Plane like he promised. His attempt to drive a wedge into the Githzerai and weaken them with a civil war so that his own forces could prevail was thwarted. But, Loki is now in possession of Sharuk's powerful soul... An Unexpected Peace?: Loki used Sharuk's soul as a "gravity well" hoping to absorb other Gith souls en-masse using Vlaakith's machine, mustering the Githyanki for a suicidal all-out attack on the Githzerai fortress. The party mustered their allies and attacked Loki's castle in the meantime. Loki raised the dead Githyanki that Vlaakith had stolen the souls of as slaughter wights to defend it from the army as the party pushed into his fortress. Loki tried to wear the party down with a series of traps and magical defenses. All the while, he drank the evil essence of digested souls trying to increase his power but remarking to himself how disgusting it was that he'd been pushed this far. Loki didn't actually want to become a being of pure evil. The party eventually made it to Loki, however, and saw through his illusion of him hiding on the ceiling and speaking through an Iron Golem. Cornered, Loki remarked that it was foolish for the Asgardian deities to be in this endless cycle of killing each other and reincarnating. He expressed regret that his prank had led to Balder's initial death and said he wished that things could return to how they were. He argued that the god of chaos was a necessary part of existence. Surprisingly, Balder aka Adam seemed to agree with him and was actually willing to forgive Loki and begin the process of mending the rift in the Pantheon so long as Loki didn't kill innocents to awaken his divinity. He could grow his power just like the group had, over time. Vornir wanted to kill Loki anyway but was stopped by Vera. At this point, Sharuk's soul ended up possessing the mass of digested souls inside Vlaakith's harvester machine to become an extremely powerful demon with Sharuk initially boasting that he'd kill them all and absorb their divinity into himself. Over the course of the battle with the party and Loki it was revealed that the mass of souls also contained Vlaakith and others who eventually subsumed Sharuk's personalty and formed the conglomerate mind of the demon Legion. Legion was defeated by the party knocking him into a slow-time distortion around Vlaakith's castle which prevented people from just teleporting in. Loki took this opportunity to flee, but he called of the Githyanki attack and left the Gith race to their own fate. The soul harvester machine was destroyed and Vlaakith's castle was repurposed into a dungeon meant to contain the sealed demon lord and stop people from trying to free it. The Gith have now begun the slow process of trying to reunify. Loki's current whereabouts and plans are unknown.